What has changed
For thirty years, clients of Indian IT bought certified process by the person-month. Infosys reached CMM Level 5 in December 1999, and the industry priced itself on that model. Now clients expect engineers who use AI tools to do the same work with fewer people. On 8 October 2026 the US Department of Labor took action against six IT outsourcers.
Clients will still pay for one thing they cannot get from a model: people who know their business. Those people write the requirements and the evaluations, and AI agents write the code. The question for a delivery head or a capability-centre leader is how to staff, price and measure that knowledge.
What I bring
- I was Infosys’s first designer, from 1995, in the years when Indian IT invented offshore delivery. I designed India’s first internet banking application in 1997.
- I wrote The New Enterprise: twelve theses, five contracts and eleven measures for the enterprise of 2031. The first measure is the intent defect rate: the share of defects caused by a misread requirement, not by wrong code.
- I build with AI agents myself. In 2026 I built a national public system through AI coding agents and handed it over.
For a global capability centre, the move is from capability centre to context centre.
How an engagement can start
Each engagement has a fixed fee, scoped in the first conversation.
Context Readiness Review · 4–6 weeks. I measure the intent defect rate, context continuity and time to context on two or three of your accounts. Then I redesign the client–vendor arrangement and its contract terms. For the head of delivery or the CEO of an IT services firm or a capability centre.
Agent Mandate Sprint · 2 weeks. One agentic workflow: its mandates, its governors, its exception budget and its budget of human attention. For a CIO, a COO or a business head.
Comprehension Risk Review · 4 weeks. For banks, insurers and fintechs. I score the consequential customer journeys by cognitive value at risk, then design voice explanation and comprehension records for the high-stakes steps. For a chief risk officer or a head of customer experience.
Advisory retainer · 6 months or more. Two days a month, and on call. For a CXO or a board.